The American Police State: Government Surveillance & Harassment

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The video "THE AMERICAN POLICE STATE" delves into the concerning phenomenon of a growing police state in the United States. Here's an overview of the concepts highlighted in the video:

Government Surveillance: The video likely discusses the pervasive surveillance conducted by various government agencies, including but not limited to the FBI, NSA, and local law enforcement. This surveillance can range from monitoring electronic communications to tracking individuals' movements through CCTV cameras and other means.

Harassment of Dissidents: Dissidents, individuals who express opposition to government policies or advocate for social change, often face harassment and intimidation from law enforcement agencies. This harassment can take various forms, including surveillance, targeted arrests, and even physical violence.

Legislative Attack on Civil Liberties: The erosion of civil liberties through legislation is a key concern raised in the video. This could refer to laws that expand government surveillance powers, limit freedom of speech and assembly, or undermine due process rights. Such legislative measures can significantly curtail the rights and freedoms of citizens.

Civil Liberties Advocacy: John Duncan, representing the Texas Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), likely provides insights into efforts to defend civil liberties in the face of government overreach. Organizations like the ACLU play a crucial role in challenging unconstitutional policies and practices through legal advocacy and public education.

FBI Dossiers: The video features a women's rights activist discussing her FBI dossier, highlighting how government agencies compile information on individuals perceived as threats or activists. These dossiers can contain sensitive personal information and be used to target individuals for surveillance or harassment.

Police Brutality: A videotape showing police brutality against demonstrators in Austin is a stark example of the excessive use of force by law enforcement. The demonstrators were protesting boat races in their community, illustrating how marginalized communities often bear the brunt of police violence.

Overall, "THE AMERICAN POLICE STATE" sheds light on the dangers of unchecked government power, the erosion of civil liberties, and the importance of activism and advocacy in safeguarding democratic principles.

A police state describes a state whose government institutions exercise an extreme level of control over civil society and liberties. There is typically little or no distinction between the law and the exercise of political power by the executive, and the deployment of internal security and police forces play a heightened role in governance. A police state is a characteristic of authoritarian, totalitarian or illiberal regimes (contrary to a liberal democratic regime). Such governments are typically one-party states, but police-state-level control may emerge in multi-party systems as well.

Originally, a police state was a state regulated by a civil administration, but since the beginning of the 20th century it has "taken on an emotional and derogatory meaning" by describing an undesirable state of living characterized by the overbearing presence of civil authorities.[1] The inhabitants of a police state may experience restrictions on their mobility, or on their freedom to express or communicate political or other views, which are subject to police monitoring or enforcement. Political control may be exerted by means of a secret police force that operates outside the boundaries normally imposed by a constitutional state.[2] Robert von Mohl, who first introduced the rule of law to German jurisprudence, contrasted the Rechtsstaat ("legal" or "constitutional" state) with the anti-aristocratic Polizeistaat ("police state").[3]
History of usage

The Oxford English Dictionary traces the phrase "police state" back to 1851, when it was used in reference to the use of a national police force to maintain order in the Austrian Empire.[4] The German term Polizeistaat came into English usage in the 1930s with reference to totalitarian governments that had begun to emerge in Europe.[5]

Because there are different political perspectives as to what an appropriate balance is between individual freedom and national security, there are no objective standards defining a police state.[citation needed] This concept can be viewed as a balance or scale. Along this spectrum, any law that has the effect of removing liberty is seen as moving towards a police state while any law that limits government oversight of the populace is seen as moving towards a free state.[6]

An electronic police state is one in which the government aggressively uses electronic technologies to record, organize, search and distribute forensic evidence against its citizens.[7][8]
Examples of states with related attributes
Demonstration in Amsterdam against the police state (politiestaat) in Portuguese Angola
"No to police state" banner in Ukraine

Early forms of police states can be found in ancient China. During the rule of King Li of Zhou in the 9th century BC, there was strict censorship, extensive state surveillance, and frequent executions of those who were perceived to be speaking against the regime. During this reign of terror, ordinary people did not dare to speak to each other on the street, and only made eye contacts with friends as a greeting, hence known as '道路以目'. Subsequently, during the short-lived Qin Dynasty, the police state became far more wide-reaching than its predecessors. In addition to strict censorship and the burning of all political and philosophical books, the state implemented strict control over its population by using collective executions and by disarming the population. Residents were grouped into units of 10 households, with weapons being strictly prohibited, and only one kitchen knife was allowed for 10 households. Spying and snitching was in common place, and failure to report any anti-regime activities was treated the same as if the person participated in it. If one person committed any crime against the regime, all 10 households would be executed.

Some have characterised the rule of King Henry VIII during the Tudor period as a police state.[9][10] The Oprichnina established by Tsar Ivan IV within the Russian Tsardom in 1565 functioned as a predecessor to the modern police state, featuring persecutions and autocratic rule.[11][12]

The USSR was described as the largest police state in history; modern-day Russia[13][14] and Belarus are often described as police states.[15][16]

Nazi Germany emerged from an originally democratic government, yet gradually exerted more and more repressive controls over its people in the lead-up to World War II. In addition to the SS and the Gestapo, the Nazi police state used the judiciary to assert control over the population from the 1930s until the end of the war in 1945.[17]

During the period of apartheid, South Africa maintained police-state attributes such as banning people and organizations, arresting political prisoners, maintaining segregated living communities and restricting movement and access.[18]

Augusto Pinochet's Chile operated as a police state,[19] exhibiting "repression of public liberties, the elimination of political exchange, limiting freedom of speech, abolishing the right to strike, freezing wages".[20]

The Republic of Cuba under President (and later right-wing dictator) Fulgencio Batista was an authoritarian police state until his overthrow during the Cuban Revolution in 1959 with the rise to power of Fidel Castro and foundation of a Marxist-Leninist republic.[21][22][23][24]
General Hafez al-Assad constructed a coup-proof police state in Ba'athist Syria to consolidate his dictatorship during the 1970s

Following the failed July 1958 Haitian coup d'état attempt to overthrow the president, Haiti descended into an autocratic and despotic family dictatorship under the Haitian Vodou black nationalist François Duvalier (Papa Doc) and his National Unity Party. In 1959, Papa Doc ordered the creation of Tonton Macoutes, a paramilitary force unit whom he authorized to commit systematic violence and human rights abuses to suppress political opposition, including an unknown number of murders, public executions, rapes, disappearances of and attacks on dissidents; an unrestrained state terrorism. In the 1964 Haitian constitutional referendum, he declared himself the president for life through a sham election. After Duvalier's death in 1971, his son Jean-Claude (Baby Doc) succeeded him as the next president for life, continuing the regime until the popular uprising that had him overthrown in February 1986.

Ba'athist Syria under the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad has been described as the most "ruthless police state" in the Arab World; with a tight system of restrictions on the movement of civilians, independent journalists and other unauthorized individuals. Alongside North Korea and Eritrea, it operates one of the strictest censorship machines that regulate the transfer of information. The Syrian security apparatus was established in the 1970s by Hafez al-Assad who ran a military dictatorship; with Ba'ath party as its civilian cover to enforce the loyalty of Syrian populations to Assad family. The dreaded Mukhabarat was given free hand to terrorise, torture or murder non-compliant civilians; while public activities of any organized opposition was curbed down with the raw firepower of the army.[25][26]

The region of modern-day North Korea is claimed to have elements of a police state, from the Juche-style Silla kingdom,[27] to the imposition of a fascist police state by the Japanese,[27] to the totalitarian police state imposed and maintained by the Kim family.[28] Paris-based Reporters Without Borders has ranked North Korea last or second last in their test of press freedom since the Press Freedom Index's introduction,[when?] stating that the ruling Kim family control all of the media.[29][30]

In response to government proposals to enact new security measures to curb protests, the AKP-led government of Turkey has been accused of turning Turkey into a police state.[31] Since the 2013 removal of the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated former Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi from office, the government of Egypt has carried out extensive efforts to suppress certain forms of Islamism and religious extremism (including the aforementioned Muslim Brotherhood),[32][better source needed] leading to accusations that it has effectively become a "revolutionary police state".[33][34]

The dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos from the 1970s to early 1980s in the Philippines has many characteristics of a police state.[35][36]

Hong Kong is perceived to have implemented the tools of a police state after passing the National Security legislation in 2020, following repeated attempts by People's Republic of China to erode the rule of law in the former British colony.[37][38][39][40][41]

Modern political commentators have suggested that the United States is in danger of becoming a police state. According to a 2023 Ramussen poll of US voters, 72% think that the US is turning into a police state. This could be due to allegations of overreach by the FBI, CIA, and other intellegence and law enforcement agencies at the hands of the government.[42]
Fictional police states
Main article: List of fictional police states
[icon]
This section needs expansion with: more examples. You can help by adding to it. (October 2023)

Fictional police states have featured in media ranging from novels to films to video games. George Orwell's novel 1984 describes Britain under the totalitarian Oceanian regime that continuously invokes (and helps to cause) a perpetual war. This perpetual war is used as a pretext for subjecting the people to mass surveillance and invasive police searches. This novel was described by The Encyclopedia of Police Science as "the definitive fictional treatment of a police state, which has also influenced contemporary usage of the term".[43]
See also

iconLaw portal

Arbitrary arrest and detention
Counterintelligence state
Dictatorship
État légal (French)
Government
Kangaroo court
Legal abuse
List of countries by incarceration rate
Martial law, the suspension of normal civil law during periods of emergency
Mass surveillance
Military dictatorship
Nanny state
Rechtsstaat (German)
Secret police
State terrorism
Surveillance state

References

Tipton, Elise K. (17 December 2013). The Japanese Police State: Tokko in Interwar Japan. A&C Black. pp. 14–. ISBN 9781780939742. Retrieved 5 September 2014.
A Dictionary of World History, Market House Books, Oxford University Press, 2000.
The Police State, Chapman, B., Government and Opposition, Vol.3:4, 428–440, (2007). Accessible online at [1], retrieved 15 August 2008.
Oxford English Dictionary, Third edition, January 2009; online version November 2010. [2]; accessed 19 January 2011. [dead link]
Dubber, Markus Dirk; Valverde, Mariana (2006). The New Police Science: The Police Power in Domestic and International Governance. Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-5392-0.
Police State (Key Concepts in Political Science), Brian Chapman, Macmillan, 1971.
"Police Checkpoints on the Information Highway", Computer underground Digest, Volume 6 : Issue 72 (14 August 1994), ISSN 1066-632X, "The so-called 'electronic frontier' is quickly turning into an electronic police state."
The Electronic Police State: 2008 National Rankings, by Jonathan Logan, Cryptohippie USA.
"Henry VIII: Henry the horrible". The Independent. 12 October 2003.
"Human truth in the Tudor police state". Financial Times. 28 September 2006.
Gella, Aleksander (1989). Development of Class Structure in Eastern Europe: Poland and Her Southern Neighbors. SUNY Press. p. 217. ISBN 9780887068331. Retrieved 20 August 2016. "Oprichnina was originally a band of faithful servants organized by Ivan IV into a police force; they were used by the tsar to crush not only all boyars (Russian nobility) under suspicion, but also the Russian princes [...]. Oprichnina enabled the tsars to build the first police state in modem history."
Wilson, Colin (1964). Rasputin and the Fall of the Romanovs. New York, Farrar, Straus. p. 60. Retrieved 20 August 2016. "[Ivan IV] established a political security force to run the Oprichina[sic], whose task was to spy on his enemies and destroy them; hence Ivan may be regarded as the inventor of the police state."
Taylor, Brian D. (18 May 2014). "From Police State to Police State? Legacies and Law Enforcement in Russia". In Beissinger, Mark; Kotkin, Stephen (eds.). Historical Legacies of Communism in Russia and Eastern Europe. Cambridge University Press. pp. 128–151. doi:10.1017/CBO9781107286191.007. ISBN 9781107054172.
"Russia's police state showed its real face in latest protest crackdown". New Eastern Europe - A bimonthly news magazine dedicated to Central and Eastern European affairs. 11 April 2021.
"Belarus: a police state in action". OSW Centre for Eastern Studies. 16 November 2020.
Higgins, Andrew; Santora, Marc (16 November 2021). "Cold and Marooned in a Police State as Desperation Takes Hold". The New York Times.
"SS Police State". U.S. Holocaust Museum. Retrieved 22 March 2014.
Cooper, Frederick (10 October 2002). Africa Since 1940: The Past of the Present. Cambridge University Press. pp. 149–. ISBN 9780521776004. Retrieved 22 March 2014.
Zwier, Paul J. (22 April 2013). Principled Negotiation and Mediation in the International Arena: Talking with Evil. Cambridge University Press. pp. 235–. ISBN 9781107026872. Retrieved 22 March 2014.
Casanova, Pablo González (1 January 1993). Latin America Today. United Nations University Press. pp. 233–. ISBN 9789280808193. Retrieved 22 March 2014.
Candelaria, Cordelia; García, Peter J.; Aldama, Arturo J. (2004). Encyclopedia of Latino Popular Culture. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 120–. ISBN 9780313332104. Retrieved 27 March 2014.
Bailey, Helen Miller; Cruz, Frank H. (1 January 1972). The Latin Americans: Past and Present. Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 9780395133736. Retrieved 27 March 2014.
Novas, Himilce (27 November 2007). Everything You Need to Know About Latino History: 2008 Edition. Penguin Group US. pp. 225–. ISBN 9781101213537. Retrieved 27 March 2014.
Paul H. Lewis. Authoritarian regimes in Latin America.
Bowen, Jeremy (2013). "Prologue: Before the Spring". The Arab Uprisings: The People Want the Fall of the Regime. Simon & Schuster. pp. 14, 15, 51, 118, 210–214, 336, 341. ISBN 9781471129827.
"RSF". RSF: Reporters Without Borders. Retrieved 7 May 2020.
Becker, Jasper (1 May 2005). Rogue Regime : Kim Jong Il and the Looming Threat of North Korea: Kim Jong Il and the Looming Threat of North Korea. Oxford University Press. pp. 74–. ISBN 9780198038108. Retrieved 22 March 2014.
Hixson, Walter L. (2008). The Myth of American Diplomacy: National Identity and U.S. Foreign Policy. Yale University Press. pp. 179–. ISBN 9780300150131. Retrieved 22 March 2014.
"North Korea Rated World's Worst Violator of Press Freedom". U.S. Department of State. 25 October 2006. Retrieved 23 July 2008.
"North Korea still one of the world's most repressive media environments".
"Critics: Proposed Legislation Turns Turkey Into Police State". VOA. Retrieved 7 June 2015.
"Egypt: The politics of reforming al-Azhar".
Khorshid, Sara (16 November 2014). "Egypt's New Police State". The New York Times. Retrieved 20 May 2016.
"Egypt: The Revolutionary Police State". Politico. Retrieved 20 May 2016.
"Marcos Orders Crackdown On Critics of Martial Law - The Washington Post". The Washington Post.
Karnow, Stanley (19 March 1989). "REAGAN AND THE PHILIPPINES: Setting Marcos Adrift". The New York Times.
Vines, Stephen (3 July 2021). "What's wrong with Hong Kong becoming a police state?". Hong Kong Free Press HKFP. Retrieved 2 June 2022.
Welle (www.dw.com), Deutsche. "Amnesty: Hong Kong on course to becoming 'police state' | DW | 30.06.2021". DW.COM. Retrieved 2 June 2022.
Rogers, Benedict (30 May 2022). "Hong Kong's thuggish new leader epitomises its descent into a police state". The Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 2 June 2022.
"Opinion: Make no mistake – this new security law turns Hong Kong into a Chinese police state". The Independent. 1 July 2020. Retrieved 2 June 2022.
"Hong Kong's New Police State". thediplomat.com. Retrieved 2 June 2022.
"Ramussen poll".

Greene, Jack R. (2007). The Encyclopedia of Police Science. Vol. 1 (3 ed.). Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-0-415-97000-6.

External links
Wikiquote has quotations related to Police state.

Amnesty International, 2005—annual report on human rights violations
Council for Secular Humanism article describing attributes of police states
David Mery (22 September 2005) "Suspicious behaviour on the tube". The Guardian—example of "police state" defined in a modern context
Police State USA—a continuously updated multi-contributor site with news articles that document police brutality in the United States
The Rutherford Institute "John W. Whitehead to Speak to Senior Statesmen of Virginia on the Emerging American Police State and What 2014 Holds in Store for Our Freedoms"
Our Ever-Deadlier Police State. Chris Hedges on the police state in the United States.

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The practice of mass surveillance in the United States dates back to wartime monitoring and censorship of international communications from, to, or which passed through the United States. After the First and Second World Wars, mass surveillance continued throughout the Cold War period, via programs such as the Black Chamber and Project SHAMROCK. The formation and growth of federal law-enforcement and intelligence agencies such as the FBI, CIA, and NSA institutionalized surveillance used to also silence political dissent, as evidenced by COINTELPRO projects which targeted various organizations and individuals. During the Civil Rights Movement era, many individuals put under surveillance orders were first labelled as integrationists, then deemed subversive, and sometimes suspected to be supportive of the communist model of the United States' rival at the time, the Soviet Union. Other targeted individuals and groups included Native American activists, African American and Chicano liberation movement activists, and anti-war protesters.

The formation of the international UKUSA surveillance agreement of 1946 evolved into the ECHELON collaboration by 1955[1] of five English-speaking nations, also known as the Five Eyes, and focused on interception of electronic communications, with substantial increases in domestic surveillance capabilities.[2]

Following the September 11th attacks of 2001, domestic and international mass surveillance capabilities grew immensely. Contemporary mass surveillance relies upon annual presidential executive orders declaring a continued State of National Emergency, first signed by George W. Bush on September 14, 2001 and then continued on an annual basis by President Barack Obama.[3] Mass surveillance is also based on several subsequent national security Acts including the USA PATRIOT Act and FISA Amendment Act's PRISM surveillance program. Critics and political dissenters currently describe the effects of these acts, orders, and resulting database network of fusion centers as forming a veritable American police state that simply institutionalized the illegal COINTELPRO tactics used to assassinate dissenters and leaders from the 1950s onwards.[4][5][6]

Additional surveillance agencies, such as the DHS and the position of Director of National Intelligence, have greatly escalated mass surveillance since 2001. A series of media reports in 2013 revealed more recent programs and techniques employed by the US intelligence community.[7][8] Advances in computer and information technology allow the creation of huge national databases that facilitate mass surveillance in the United States[7] by DHS managed fusion centers, the CIA's Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC) program, and the FBI's Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB).

Mass surveillance databases are also cited as responsible for profiling Latino Americans and contributing to "self-deportation" techniques, or physical deportations by way of the DHS's ICEGang national database.[9]

After World War I, the US Army and State Department established the Black Chamber, also known as the Cipher Bureau, which began operations in 1919.[10] The Black Chamber was headed by Herbert O. Yardley, who had been a leader in the Army's Military Intelligence program. Regarded as a precursor to the National Security Agency, it conducted peacetime decryption of material including diplomatic communications until 1929.[11][12]

In the advent of World War II, the Office of Censorship was established. The wartime agency monitored "communications by mail, cable, radio, or other means of transmission passing between the United States and any foreign country".[13] This included the 350,000 overseas cables and telegrams and 25,000 international telephone calls made each week.[14]: 144  "Every letter that crossed international or U.S. territorial borders from December 1941 to August 1945 was subject to being opened and scoured for details."[13]

With the end of World War II, Project SHAMROCK was established in 1945. The organization was created to accumulate telegraphic data entering and exiting from the United States.[11][15] Major communication companies such as Western Union, RCA Global and ITT World Communications actively aided the project, allowing American intelligence officials to gain access to international message traffic.[16] Under the project, and many subsequent programs, no precedent had been established for judicial authorization, and no warrants were issued for surveillance activities. The project was terminated in 1975.[11]

President Harry S. Truman established the National Security Agency (NSA) in 1952 for the purposes of collecting, processing, and monitoring intelligence data.[17] The existence of NSA was not known to people as the memorandum by President Truman was classified.[18]

When the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI published stolen FBI documents revealing abuse of intelligence programs in 1971, Senator Frank Church began an investigation into the programs that become known as the Church Committee. The committee sought to investigate intelligence abuses throughout the 1970s. Following a report provided by the committee outlining egregious abuse, in 1976 Congress established the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. It would later be joined by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in 1978.[11] The institutions worked to limit the power of the agencies, ensuring that surveillance activities remained within the rule of law.[19]

Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, Congress passed The Patriot Act to strengthen security and intelligence efforts. The act granted the President broad powers on the war against terror, including the power to bypass the FISA Court for surveillance orders in cases of national security. Additionally, mass surveillance activities were conducted alongside various other surveillance programs under the head of President's Surveillance Program.[20] Under pressure from the public, the warrantless wiretapping program was allegedly ended in January 2007.[21]

Many details about the surveillance activities conducted in the United States were revealed in the disclosure by Edward Snowden in June 2013.[22][23] Regarded as one of the biggest media leaks in the United States, it presented extensive details about the surveillance programs of the NSA, that involved interception of Internet data and telephonic calls from over a billion users, across various countries.[24][23]
National Security Agency (NSA)
At the request of the U.S. Army, those who protested against the Vietnam War were put on the NSA's "watch list".[16]

1947: The National Security Act was signed by President Truman, establishing a National Security Council.[25][26]

1949: The Armed Forces Security Agency was established to coordinate signal operations between military branches.[27]

1952: The National Security Agency (NSA) was officially established by President Truman by way of a National Security Council Intelligence Directive 9, dated Oct. 24, while the NSA officially came into existence days later on Nov. 4.[11] According to The New York Times, the NSA was created in "absolute secrecy" by President Truman,[28] whose surveillance-minded administration ordered, only six weeks after President Truman took office, wiretaps on the telephones of Thomas Gardiner Corcoran, a close advisor of Franklin D. Roosevelt.[29] The recorded conversations are currently kept at the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum, along with other documents considered sensitive (≈233,600 pages).
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

Institutional domestic surveillance was founded in 1896 with the National Bureau of Criminal Identification, which evolved by 1908 into the Bureau of Investigation, operated under the authority of the Department of Justice. In 1935, the FBI had grown into an independent agency under the direction of J. Edgar Hoover whose staff, through the use of wire taps, cable taps, mail tampering, garbage filtering and infiltrators, prepared secret FBI Index Lists on more than 10 million people by 1939.[30]

Purported to be chasing 'communists' and other alleged subversives, the FBI used public and private pressure to destroy the lives of those it targeted during McCarthyism, including those lives of the Hollywood 10 with the Hollywood blacklist. The FBI's surveillance and investigation roles expanded in the 1950s while using the collected information to facilitate political assassinations, including the murders of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark in 1969. FBI is also directly connected to the bombings, assassinations, and deaths of other people including Malcolm X in 1963, Viola Liuzzo in 1965, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, Anna Mae Pictou Aquash in 1976, and Judi Bari in 1990.[31]

As the extent of the FBI's domestic surveillance continued to grow, many celebrities were also secretly investigated by the bureau, including:

First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt – A vocal critic of Hoover who likened the FBI to an 'American Gestapo' for its Index lists.[32] Roosevelt also spoke out against anti-Japanese prejudice during the second world war, and was later a delegate to the United Nations and instrumental in creating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The 3,000-page FBI dossier on Eleanor Roosevelt reveals Hoover's close monitoring of her activities and writings, and contains retaliatory charges against her for suspected Communist activities.[33][34]
Frank Sinatra – His 1,300 page FBI dossier, dating from 1943, contains allegations about Sinatra's possible ties to the American Communist Party. The FBI spent several decades tracking Sinatra and his associates.[35][36]
Marilyn Monroe – Her FBI dossier begins in 1955 and continues up until the months before her death. It focuses mostly on her travels and associations, searching for signs of leftist views and possible ties to communism.[37] Her ex-husband, Arthur Miller, was also monitored.[citation needed] Monroe's FBI dossier is "heavily censored", but a "reprocessed" version has been released by the FBI to the public.[37]
John Lennon – In 1971, shortly after Lennon arrived in the United States on a visa to meet up with anti-war activists, the FBI placed Lennon under surveillance, and the U.S. government tried to deport him from the country.[38] At that time, opposition to the Vietnam War had reached a peak and Lennon often showed up at political rallies to sing his anti-war anthem "Give Peace a Chance".[38] The U.S. government argued that Lennon's 300 page FBI dossier was particularly sensitive because its release may "lead to foreign diplomatic, economic and military retaliation against the United States",[39] and therefore only approved a "heavily censored" version.[40]
The Beatles, of which John Lennon was a member, had a separate FBI dossier.

Some of the greatest historical figures of the 20th century, including several U.S. citizens, were placed under warrantless surveillance for the purpose of character assassination – a process that aims to destroy the credibility and reputation of a person, institution, or nation.

Left: Albert Einstein, who supported the anti-war movement and opposed nuclear proliferation, was a member of numerous civil rights groups including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (See Albert Einstein's political views). As a result of his political views, Einstein was subjected to telephone tapping, and his mail was searched by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as part of a secret government campaign that aimed to link him with a Soviet espionage ring in order to first discredit him, and then deport him (unsuccessfully) from the United States.[41][42][43]

Center: Martin Luther King Jr., a leader of the Civil Rights Movement, was the target of an intensive campaign by the FBI to "neutralize" him as an effective civil rights activist.[44] An FBI memo recognized King to be the "most dangerous and effective Negro leader in the country.",[45] and the agency wanted to discredit him by collecting evidence to (unsuccessfully) prove that he had been influenced by communism.[45]

Right: Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers to the media in 1971, experienced one of the most spectacular episodes of government surveillance and character assassination. The White House tried to steal his medical records and other possibly detrimental information by sending a special unit to break into the office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist.[46][47] These activities were later uncovered during the course of investigation as the Watergate scandal slowly unfolded, which eventually led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon.[48]
See also: The FBI kept a dossier on Albert Einstein (≈1,500 pages) and Martin Luther King Jr. (≈17,000 pages). Due to a court order, however, some information has been removed and many other pages will not be released until the year 2027.[49]

1967–73: The now-defunct Project MINARET was created to spy on U.S. citizens. At the request of the U.S. Army, those who protested against the Vietnam War were put on the NSA's "watch list".[16]
The Church Committee of the United States Senate published the final report on "Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans" in 1976 (PDF, 26.54 MB)
From 1940 until his death in 1966, the American business magnate Walt Disney served as a "S.A.C. Contact" (trusted informant) for the U.S. government to weed out communists and dissidents from the entertainment industry, according to documents obtained by The New York Times.[50]
See also: Hollywood blacklist
Church committee review

1975: The Church Committee of the United States Senate was set up to investigate widespread intelligence abuses by the NSA, CIA and FBI.[11] Domestic surveillance, authorized by the highest executive branch of the federal government, spanned from the FDR Administration to the Presidency of Richard Nixon. The following examples were reported by the Church Committee:

President Roosevelt asked the FBI to put in its files the names of citizens sending telegrams to the White House opposing his "national defense" policy and supporting Col. Charles Lindbergh.[51]
President Truman received inside information on a former Roosevelt aide's efforts to influence his appointments, labor union negotiating plans, and the publishing plans of journalists.[51]
President Eisenhower received reports on purely political and social contacts with foreign officials by Bernard Baruch, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas.[51]
The Kennedy administration ordered the FBI to wiretap a congressional staff member, three executive officials, a lobbyist, and a Washington law firm. US Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy received data from an FBI wire tap on Martin Luther King Jr. and an electronic listening device targeting a congressman, both of which yielded information of a political nature.[51]
President Johnson asked the FBI to conduct "name checks" on his critics and members of the staff of his 1964 opponent, Senator Barry Goldwater. He also requested purely political intelligence on his critics in the Senate, and received extensive intelligence reports on political activity at the 1964 Democratic Convention from FBI electronic surveillance.[51]
President Nixon authorized a program of wiretaps which produced for the White House purely political or personal information unrelated to national security, including information about a Supreme Court justice.[51]

The Final Report (Book II) of the Church Committee revealed the following statistics:

Over 26,000 individuals were at one point catalogued on an FBI list of persons to be rounded up in the event of a "national emergency".[51]
Over 500,000 domestic intelligence files were kept at the FBI headquarters, of which 65,000 were opened in 1972 alone.[51]
At least 130,000 first class letters were opened and photographed by the FBI from 1940 to 1966.[51]
A quarter of a million first class letters were opened and photographed by the CIA from 1953 to 1973.[51]
Millions of private telegrams sent from, or to, through the United States were obtained by the National Security Agency (NSA), under a secret arrangement with U.S. telegraph companies, from 1947 to 1975.[51]
Over 100,000 Americans have been indexed in U.S. Army intelligence files.[51]
About 300,000 individuals were indexed in a CIA computer system during the course of Operation CHAOS.[51]
Intelligence files on more than 11,000 individuals and groups were created by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), with tax investigations "done on the basis of political rather than tax criteria".[51]

In response to the committee's findings, the United States Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in 1978, which led to the establishment of the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which was authorized to issue surveillance warrants.[52]

Several decades later in 2013, the presiding judge of the FISA Court, Reggie Walton, told The Washington Post that the court only has a limited ability to supervise the government's surveillance, and is therefore "forced" to rely upon the accuracy of the information that is provided by federal agents.[53]

On August 17, 1975 Senator Frank Church stated on NBC's "Meet the Press" without mentioning the name of the NSA about this agency:

In the need to develop a capacity to know what potential enemies are doing, the United States government has perfected a technological capability that enables us to monitor the messages that go through the air. Now, that is necessary and important to the United States as we look abroad at enemies or potential enemies. We must know, at the same time, that capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left such is the capability to monitor everything — telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn't matter. There would be no place to hide.

If this government ever became a tyrant, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology.

I don't want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.[54][55][56]

ECHELON
Main article: ECHELON

In 1988 an article titled "Somebody's listening" by Duncan Campbell in the New Statesman described the signals-intelligence gathering activities of a program code-named "ECHELON".[57] The program was engaged by English-speaking World War II Allied countries – Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States (collectively known as AUSCANNZUKUS). It was created by the five countries to monitor the military and diplomatic communications of the Soviet Union and of its Eastern Bloc allies during the Cold War in the early 1960s.[58]

By the 1990s the ECHELON system could intercept satellite transmissions, public switched telephone network (PSTN) communications (including most Internet traffic), and transmissions carried by microwave. The New Zealand journalist Nicky Hager provided a detailed description of ECHELON in his 1996 book Secret Power.[59] While some member governments denied the existence of ECHELON, a report by a committee of the European Parliament in 2001 confirmed the program's use and warned Europeans about its reach and effects.[60] The European Parliament stated in its report that the term "ECHELON" occurred in a number of contexts, but that the evidence presented indicated it was a signals-intelligence collection system capable of interception and content-inspection of telephone calls, fax, e-mail and other data-traffic globally.[58]

James Bamford further described the capabilities of ECHELON in Body of Secrets (2002) about the National Security Agency.[61] Intelligence monitoring of citizens, and their communications, in the area covered by the AUSCANNZUKUS security agreement have, over the years, caused considerable public concern.[62][63]
Escalation following September 11, 2001 attacks
Further information: NSA warrantless surveillance (2001–07)

We will come together to strengthen our intelligence capabilities to know the plans of terrorists before they act and to find them before they strike.
— President Bush speaking in Congress on September 20, 2001[64]

The September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon led to major reforms of U.S. intelligence agencies, and paved the way for the establishment of the Director of National Intelligence position.
On 1 January 2006, days after The New York Times wrote that "Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts,[65] the President emphasized that "This is a limited program designed to prevent attacks on the United States of America. And I repeat, limited."[66]

In the aftermath of the September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, bulk domestic spying in the United States increased dramatically. The desire to prevent future attacks of this scale led to the passage of the Patriot Act. Later acts include the Protect America Act (which removes the warrant requirement for government surveillance of foreign targets)[67] and the FISA Amendments Act (which relaxed some of the original FISA court requirements).

In 2002, "Total Information Awareness" was established by the U.S. government in order to "revolutionize the ability of the United States to detect, classify and identify foreign terrorists".[68]

In 2005, a report about President Bush's President's Surveillance Program appeared in The New York Times. According to reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, the actual publication of their report was delayed for a year because "The White House asked The New York Times not to publish this article".[65]

Also in 2005, the existence of STELLARWIND was revealed by Thomas Tamm.[69] In 2006, Mark Klein revealed the existence of Room 641A that he had wired back in 2003.[70] In 2008, Babak Pasdar, a computer security expert, and CEO of Bat Blue publicly revealed the existence of the "Quantico circuit", that he and his team found in 2003. He described it as a back door to the federal government in the systems of an unnamed wireless provider; the company was later independently identified as Verizon.[71]

The NSA's database of American's phone calls was made public in 2006 by USA Today journalist Leslie Cauley in an article titled, "NSA has massive database of Americans' phone calls."[72] The article cites anonymous sources that described the program's reach on American citizens:

... it means that the government has detailed records of calls they made — across town or across the country — to family members, co-workers, business contacts and others. The three telecommunications companies are working under contract with the NSA, which launched the program in 2001 shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.[72]

In 2009, The New York Times cited several anonymous intelligence officials alleging that "the N.S.A. made Americans targets in eavesdropping operations based on insufficient evidence tying them to terrorism" and "the N.S.A. tried to wiretap a member of Congress without a warrant".[73]
Acceleration of media leaks (2010–present)

On 15 March 2012, the American magazine Wired published an article with the headline "The NSA Is Building the Country's Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say)",[74] which was later mentioned by U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson during a congressional hearing. In response to Johnson's inquiry, NSA director Keith B. Alexander testified that these allegations made by Wired magazine were untrue:
Excerpt from Wired magazine's article originally published on 15 March 2012[74]
NSA Director Keith Alexander's testimony to the United States Congress on 20 March 2012[75]
2013 mass surveillance disclosures
Main article: 2013 mass surveillance disclosures
Part of a series on
Mass surveillance
By location

Australia Canada China East Germany India Iran New Zealand North Korea Russia South Africa United Kingdom United States

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On 6 June 2013, Britain's The Guardian newspaper began publishing a series of revelations by an unnamed American whistleblower, revealed several days later to be former CIA and NSA-contracted systems analyst Edward Snowden. Snowden gave a cache of internal documents in support of his claims to two journalists: Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, Greenwald later estimated that the cache contains 15,000–20,000 documents, some very large and very detailed, and some very small.[76][77] This was one of the largest news leaks in the modern history of the United States.[24] In over two months of publications, it became clear that the NSA operates a complex web of spying programs which allow it to intercept internet and telephone conversations from over a billion users from dozens of countries around the world. Specific revelations have been made about China, the European Union, Latin America, Iran and Pakistan, and Australia and New Zealand, however the published documentation reveals that many of the programs indiscriminately collect bulk information directly from central servers and internet backbones, which almost invariably carry and reroute information from distant countries.

Due to this central server and backbone monitoring, many of the programs overlap and interrelate among one another. These programs are often done with the assistance of US entities such as the United States Department of Justice and the FBI,[78] are sanctioned by US laws such as the FISA Amendments Act, and the necessary court orders for them are signed by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. In addition to this, many of the NSA's programs are directly aided by national and foreign intelligence services, Britain's GCHQ and Australia's DSD, as well as by large private telecommunications and Internet corporations, such as Verizon, Telstra,[79] Google and Facebook.[80]

On 9 June 2013, Edward Snowden told The Guardian:

They (the NSA) can use the system to go back in time and scrutinize every decision you've ever made, every friend you've ever discussed something with, and attack you on that basis to sort of derive suspicion from an innocent life and paint anyone in the context of a wrongdoer.
— Edward Snowden[81]

The US government has aggressively sought to dismiss and challenge Fourth Amendment cases raised: Hepting v. AT&T, Jewel v. NSA, Clapper v. Amnesty International, Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation v. Obama, and Center for Constitutional Rights v. Bush. The government has also granted retroactive immunity to ISPs and telecoms participating in domestic surveillance.[82][83]

The US district court judge for the District of Columbia, Richard Leon, declared[84][85][86][87][88][89] on December 16, 2013 that the mass collection of metadata of Americans' telephone records by the National Security Agency probably violates the Fourth Amendment prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures.[90]

Given the limited record before me at this point in the litigation – most notably, the utter lack of evidence that a terrorist attack has ever been prevented because searching the NSA database was faster than other investigative tactics – I have serious doubts about the efficacy of the metadata collection program as a means of conducting time-sensitive investigations in cases involving imminent threats of terrorism.[91]

"Plaintiffs have a substantial likelihood of showing that their privacy interests outweigh the government's interest in collecting and analysing bulk telephony metadata and therefore the NSA's bulk collection program is indeed an unreasonable search under the fourth amendment," he wrote.[91]

"The Fourth Amendment typically requires 'a neutral and detached authority be interposed between the police and the public,' and it is offended by 'general warrants' and laws that allow searches to be conducted 'indiscriminately and without regard to their connections with a crime under investigation,'" he wrote.[92] He added:

I cannot imagine a more 'indiscriminate' and 'arbitrary invasion' than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen for purposes of querying and analyzing it without prior judicial approval. Surely such a program infringes on 'that degree of privacy' that the founders enshrined in the Fourth Amendment. Indeed I have little doubt that the author of our Constitution, James Madison, who cautioned us to beware 'the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power,' would be aghast.[92]

Leon granted the request for a preliminary injunction that blocks the collection of phone data for two private plaintiffs (Larry Klayman, a conservative lawyer, and Charles Strange, father of a cryptologist killed in Afghanistan when his helicopter was shot down in 2011)[91] and ordered the government to destroy any of their records that have been gathered. But the judge stayed action on his ruling pending a government appeal, recognizing in his 68-page opinion the "significant national security interests at stake in this case and the novelty of the constitutional issues."[90]
H.R.4681 – Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015

On 20 May 2014, U.S. Representative for Michigan's 8th congressional district Republican congressman Mike Rogers introduced Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015 with the goal of authorizing appropriations for fiscal years 2014 and 2015 for intelligence and intelligence-related activities of the United States Government, the Community Management Account, and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Retirement and Disability System, and for other purposes.[93]

Some of its measures cover the limitation on retention. A covered communication (meaning any nonpublic telephone or electronic communication acquired without the consent of a person who is a party to the communication, including communications in electronic storage) shall not be retained in excess of 5 years, unless: (i) the communication has been affirmatively determined, in whole or in part, to constitute foreign intelligence or counterintelligence or is necessary to understand or assess foreign intelligence or counterintelligence; (ii) the communication is reasonably believed to constitute evidence of a crime and is retained by a law enforcement agency; (iii) the communication is enciphered or reasonably believed to have a secret meaning; (iv) all parties to the communication are reasonably believed to be non-United States persons; (v) retention is necessary to protect against an imminent threat to human life, in which case both the nature of the threat and the information to be retained shall be reported to the congressional intelligence committees not later than 30 days after the date such retention is extended under this clause; (vi) retention is necessary for technical assurance or compliance purposes, including a court order or discovery obligation, in which case access to information retained for technical assurance or compliance purposes shall be reported to the congressional intelligence committees on an annual basis; (vii) retention for a period in excess of 5 years is approved by the head of the element of the intelligence community responsible for such retention, based on a determination that retention is necessary to protect the national security of the United States, in which case the head of such element shall provide to the congressional intelligence committees a written certification describing (I) the reasons extended retention is necessary to protect the national security of the United States; (II) the duration for which the head of the element is authorizing retention; (III) the particular information to be retained; and (IV) the measures the element of the intelligence community is taking to protect the privacy interests of United States persons or persons located inside the United States.[94]

On 10 December 2014, Republican U.S. Representative for Michigan's 3rd congressional district member of Congress Justin Amash criticized the act on his Facebook as being "one of the most egregious sections of law I've encountered during my time as a representative" and "It grants the executive branch virtually unlimited access to the communications of every American".[95]
USA Freedom Act

The USA Freedom Act was signed into law on June 2, 2015, the day after certain provisions of the Patriot Act had expired. It mandated an end to bulk collection of phone call metadata by the NSA within 180 days, but allowed continued mandatory retention of metadata by phone companies with access by the government with case-by-case approval from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.[96]
Modalities, concepts, and methods
Official seal of the Information Awareness Office – a U.S. agency which developed technologies for mass surveillance
Logging postal mail
Main article: Mail Isolation Control and Tracking

Under the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program, the U.S. Postal Service photographs the exterior of every piece of paper mail that is processed in the United States — about 160 billion pieces in 2012. The U.S. Postmaster General stated that the system is primarily used for mail sorting, but the images are available for possible use by law enforcement agencies.[97] Created in 2001 following the anthrax attacks that killed five people, it is a sweeping expansion of a 100-year-old program called "mail cover" which targets people suspected of crimes. Together, the two programs show that postal mail is subject to the same kind of scrutiny that the National Security Agency gives to telephone calls, e-mail, and other forms of electronic communication.[98]

Mail cover surveillance requests are granted for about 30 days, and can be extended for up to 120 days. Images captured under the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program are retained for a week to 30 days and then destroyed.[97] There are two kinds of mail covers: those related to criminal activity and those requested to protect national security. Criminal activity requests average 15,000 to 20,000 per year, while the number of requests for national security mail covers has not been made public. Neither the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program nor the mail cover program require prior approval by a judge. For both programs the information gathered is metadata from the outside of the envelope or package for which courts have said there is no expectation of privacy. Opening the mail to view its contents would require a warrant approved by a judge.[98]
Wiretapping

Billions of dollars per year are spent, by agencies such as the Information Awareness Office, National Security Agency, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, to develop, purchase, implement, and operate systems such as Carnivore, ECHELON, and NarusInsight to intercept and analyze the immense amount of data that traverses the Internet and telephone system every day.[99]

The Total Information Awareness program, of the Information Awareness Office, was formed in 2002 by the Pentagon and led by former rear admiral John Poindexter.[100] The program designed numerous technologies to be used to perform mass surveillance. Examples include advanced speech-to-text programs (so that phone conversations can be monitored en-masse by a computer, instead of requiring human operators to listen to them), social network analysis software to monitor groups of people and their interactions with each other, and "Human identification at a distance" software which allows computers to identify people on surveillance cameras by their facial features and gait (the way they walk). The program was later renamed "Terrorism Information Awareness", after a negative public reaction.
Legal foundations

The Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), passed in 1994, requires that all U.S. telecommunications companies modify their equipment to allow easy wiretapping of telephone, VoIP, and broadband Internet traffic.[101][102][103]

In 1999 two models of mandatory data retention were suggested for the US. The first model would record the IP address assigned to a customer at a specific time. In the second model, "which is closer to what Europe adopted", telephone numbers dialed, contents of Web pages visited, and recipients of e-mail messages must be retained by the ISP for an unspecified amount of time.[104][105] In 2006 the International Association of Chiefs of Police adopted a resolution calling for a "uniform data retention mandate" for "customer subscriber information and source and destination information."[106] The U.S. Department of Justice announced in 2011 that criminal investigations "are being frustrated" because no law currently exists to force Internet providers to keep track of what their customers are doing.[107]

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has an ongoing lawsuit (Hepting v. AT&T) against the telecom giant AT&T Inc. for its assistance to the U.S. government in monitoring the communications of millions of American citizens. It has managed thus far to keep the proceedings open. Recently the documents, which were exposed by a whistleblower who had previously worked for AT&T, and showed schematics of the massive data mining system, were made public.[108][109]
Internet communications

The FBI developed the computer programs "Magic Lantern" and CIPAV, which it can remotely install on a computer system, in order to monitor a person's computer activity.[110]

The NSA has been gathering information on financial records, Internet surfing habits, and monitoring e-mails. It has also performed extensive surveillance on social networks such as Facebook.[111] Recently, Facebook has revealed that, in the last six months of 2012, they handed over the private data of between 18,000 and 19,000 users to law enforcement of all types—including local police and federal agencies, such as the FBI, Federal Marshals and the NSA.[112] One form of wiretapping utilized by the NSA is RADON, a bi-directional host tap that can inject Ethernet packets onto the same target. It allows bi-directional exploitation of Denied networks using standard on-net tools. The one limitation of RADON is that it is a USB device that requires a physical connection to a laptop or PC to work. RADON was created by a Massachusetts firm called Netragard. Their founder, Adriel Desautels, said about RADON, "it is our 'safe' malware. RADON is designed to enable us to infect customer systems in a safe and controllable manner. Safe means that every strand is built with an expiration date that, when reached, results in RADON performing an automatic and clean self-removal."[113]

The NSA is also known to have splitter sites in the United States. Splitter sites are places where a copy of every packet is directed to a secret room where it is analyzed by the Narus STA 6400, a deep packet inspection device.[114] Although the only known location is at 611 Folsom Street, San Francisco, California, expert analysis of Internet traffic suggests that there are likely several locations throughout the United States.
Advertising data

In September 2022 the EFF and AP revealed their investigation into the use of advertising IDs to develop the Fog Reveal database.[115][116] Fog Reveal aggregates location data from mobile applications, which is then supplied as a service to United States law enforcement agencies.
Intelligence apparatus to monitor Americans

Since the September 11 attacks, a vast domestic intelligence apparatus has been built to collect information using FBI, local police, state homeland security offices and military criminal investigators. The intelligence apparatus collects, analyzes and stores information about millions of (if not all) American citizens, most of whom have not been accused of any wrongdoing. Every state and local law enforcement agency is to feed information to federal authorities to support the work of the FBI.[117]

The PRISM special source operation system was enabled by the Protect America Act of 2007 under President Bush and the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which legally immunized private companies that cooperated voluntarily with US intelligence collection and was renewed by Congress under President Obama in 2012 for five years until December 2017. According to The Register, the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 "specifically authorizes intelligence agencies to monitor the phone, email, and other communications of U.S. citizens for up to a week without obtaining a warrant" [citation needed] when one of the parties is outside the U.S.

PRISM was first publicly revealed on 6 June 2013, after classified documents about the program were leaked to The Washington Post and The Guardian by Edward Snowden.
Telephones

In early 2006, USA Today reported that several major telephone companies were cooperating illegally with the National Security Agency to monitor the phone records of U.S. citizens, and storing them in a large database known as the NSA call database. This report came on the heels of allegations that the U.S. government had been conducting electronic surveillance of domestic telephone calls without warrants.[118]

Law enforcement and intelligence services in the United States possess technology to remotely activate the microphones in cell phones in order to listen to conversations that take place nearby the person who holds the phone.[119][120][121]

U.S. federal agents regularly use mobile phones to collect location data. The geographical location of a mobile phone (and thus the per

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